great payments of workmen in them, you would do this; I know you would,
and will, as Builders; but, I repeat, it is not your _building_
that I am talking about, but your _brains_; it is your invention
and imagination of whose profit I am speaking. The good done through
the building, observe, is done by your employers, not by you--you share
in the benefit of it. The good that _you_ personally must do is by
your designing; and I compare you with musicians who do good by their
pathetic composing, not as they do good by employing fiddlers in the
orchestra; for it is the public who in reality do that, not the
musicians. So clearly keeping to this one question, what good we
architects are to do by our genius; and having found that on our
proportionate system we can do no good to others, will you tell me,
lastly, what good we can do to _ourselves_?
Observe, nearly every other liberal art or profession has some intense
pleasure connected with it, irrespective of any good to others. As
lawyers, or physicians, or clergymen, you would have the pleasure of
investigation, and of historical reading, as part of your work: as men
of science you would be rejoicing in curiosity perpetually gratified
respecting the laws and facts of nature: as artists you would have
delight in watching the external forms of nature: as day labourers or
petty tradesmen, supposing you to undertake such work with as much
intellect as you are going to devote to your designing, you would find
continued subjects of interest in the manufacture or the agriculture
which you helped to improve; or in the problems of commerce which bore
on your business. But your architectural designing leads you into no
pleasant journeys,--into no seeing of lovely things,--no discerning of
just laws,--no warmths of compassion, no humilities of veneration, no
progressive state of sight or soul. Our conclusion is--must be--that
you will not amuse, nor inform, nor help anybody; you will not amuse,
nor better, nor inform yourselves; you will sink into a state in which
you can neither show, nor feel, nor see, anything, but that one is to
two as three is to six. And in that state what should we call
ourselves? Men? I think not. The right name for us would be--numerators
and denominators. Vulgar Fractions.
Shall we, then, abandon this theory of the soul of architecture being
in proportional lines, and look whether we can find anything better to
exert our fancies upon?
May we not, to begin with, accept this great principle--that, as our
bodies, to be in health, must be _generally_ exercised, so our
minds, to be in health, must be _generally_ cultivated? You would
not call a man healthy who had strong arms but was paralytic in his
feet; nor one who could walk well, but had no use of his hands; nor one
who could see well, if he could not hear. You would not voluntarily
reduce your bodies to any such partially developed state. Much more,
then, you would not, if you could help it, reduce your minds to it.
Now, your minds are endowed with a vast number of gifts of totally
different uses--limbs of mind as it were, which, if you don't exercise,
you cripple. One is curiosity; that is a gift, a capacity of pleasure
in knowing; which if you destroy, you make yourselves cold and dull.
Another is sympathy; the power of sharing in the feelings of living
creatures, which if you destroy, you make yourselves hard and cruel.
Another of your limbs of mind is admiration; the power of enjoying
beauty or ingenuity, which, if you destroy, you make yourselves base
and irreverent. Another is wit; or the power of playing with the lights
on the many sides of truth; which if you destroy, you make yourselves
gloomy, and less useful and cheering to others than you might be. So
that in choosing your way of work it should be your aim, as far as
possible, to bring out all these faculties, as far as they exist in
you; not one merely, nor another, but all of them. And the way to bring
them out, is simply to concern yourselves attentively with the subjects
of each faculty. To cultivate sympathy you must be among living
creatures, and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration, you
must be among beautiful things and looking at them.
All this sounds much like truism, at least I hope it does, for then you
will surely not refuse to act upon it; and to consider farther, how, as
architects, you are to keep yourselves in contemplation of living
creatures and lovely things.
You all probably know the beautiful photographs which have been
published within the last year or two of the porches of the Cathedral
of Amiens. I hold one of these up to you, (merely that you may know
what I am talking about, as of course you cannot see the detail at this
distance, but you will recognise the subject.) Have you ever considered
how much sympathy, and how much humour, are developed in filling this
single doorway [Footnote: The tympanum of the south transcept door; it
is to be found generally among all collections of architectural
photographs] with these sculptures of the history of St. Honoré (and,
by the way, considering how often we English are now driving up and
down the Rue St. Honoré, we may as well know as much of the saint as
the old architect cared to tell us). You know in all legends of saints
who ever were bishops, the first thing you are told of them is that
they didn't want to be bishops. So here is St. Honoré, who doesn't want
to be a bishop, sitting sulkily in the corner; he hugs his book with
both hands, and won't get up to take his crosier; and here are all the
city aldermen of Amiens come to _poke_ him up; and all the monks
in the town in a great puzzle what they shall do for a bishop if St.
Honoré won't be; and here's one of the monks in the opposite corner who
is quite cool about it, and thinks they'll get on well enough without
St Honoré,--you see that in his face perfectly. At last St. Honoré
consents to be bishop, and here he sits in a throne, and has his book
now grandly on his desk instead of his knees, and he directs one of his
village curates how to find relics in a wood; here is the wood, and
here is the village curate, and here are the tombs, with the bones of
St. Victorien and Gentien in them.
After this, St. Honoré performs grand mass, and the miracle occurs of
the appearance of a hand blessing the wafer, which occurrence
afterwards was painted for the arms of the abbey. Then St. Honoré dies;
and here is his tomb with his statue on the top; and miracles are being
performed at it--a deaf man having his ear touched, and a blind man
groping his way up to the tomb with his dog. Then here is a great
procession in honour of the relics of St. Honoré; and under his coffin
are some cripples being healed; and the coffin itself is put above the
bar which separates the cross from the lower subjects, because the
tradition is that the figure on the crucifix of the Church of St.
Firmin bowed its head in token of acceptance, as the relics of St.
Honoré passed beneath.
Now just consider the amount of sympathy with human nature, and
observance of it, shown in this one bas-relief; the sympathy with
disputing monks, with puzzled aldermen, with melancholy recluse, with
triumphant prelate, with palsy-stricken poverty, with ecclesiastical
magnificence, or miracle-working faith. Consider how much intellect was
needed in the architect, and how much observance of nature before he
could give the expression to these various figures--cast these
multitudinous draperies--design these rich and quaint fragments of
tombs and altars--weave with perfect animation the entangled branches
of the forest.
But you will answer me, all this is not architecture at all--it is
sculpture. Will you then tell me precisely where the separation exists
between one and the other? We will begin at the very beginning. I will
show you a piece of what you will certainly admit to be a piece of pure
architecture; [Footnote: See Appendix III., "Classical Architecture."]
it is drawn on the back of another photograph, another of these
marvellous tympana from Notre Dame, which you call, I suppose, impure.
Well, look on this picture, and on this. Don't laugh; you must not
laugh, that's very improper of you, this is classical architecture. I
have taken it out of the essay on that subject in the "Encyclopædia
Britannica."
Yet I suppose none of you would think yourselves particularly ingenious
architects if you had designed nothing more than this; nay, I will even
let you improve it into any grand proportion you choose, and add to it
as many windows as you choose; the only thing I insist upon in our
specimen of pure architecture is, that there shall be no mouldings nor
ornaments upon it. And I suspect you don't quite like your architecture
so "pure" as this. We want a few mouldings, you will say--just a few.
Those who want mouldings, hold up their hands. We are unanimous, I
think. Will, you, then, design the profiles of these mouldings
yourselves, or will you copy them? If you wish to copy them, and to
copy them always, of course I leave you at once to your authorities,
and your imaginations to their repose. But if you wish to design them
yourselves, how do you do it? You draw the profile according to your
taste, and you order your mason to cut it. Now, will you tell me the
logical difference between drawing the profile of a moulding and giving
_that_ to be cut, and drawing the folds of the drapery of a statue
and giving _those_ to be cut. The last is much more difficult to
do than the first; but degrees of difficulty constitute no specific
difference, and you will not accept it, surely, as a definition of the
difference between architecture and sculpture, that "architecture is
doing anything that is easy, and sculpture anything that is difficult."
It is true, also, that the carved moulding represents nothing, and the
carved drapery represents something; but you will not, I should think,
accept, as an explanation of the difference between architecture and
sculpture, this any more than the other, that "sculpture is art which
has meaning, and architecture art which has none."
Where, then, is your difference? In this, perhaps, you will say; that
whatever ornaments we can direct ourselves, and get accurately cut to
order, we consider architectural. The ornaments that we are obliged to
leave to the pleasure of the workman, or the superintendence of some
other designer, we consider sculptural, especially if they are more or
less extraneous and incrusted--not an essential part of the building.
Accepting this definition, I am compelled to reply, that it is in
effect nothing more than an amplification of my first one--that
whatever is easy you call architecture, whatever is difficult you call
sculpture. For you cannot suppose the arrangement of the place in which
the sculpture is to be put is so difficult or so great a part of the
design as the sculpture itself. For instance: you all know the pulpit
of Niccolo Pisano, in the baptistry at Pisa. It is composed of seven
rich _relievi_, surrounded by panel mouldings, and sustained on
marble shafts. Do you suppose Niccolo Pisano's reputation--such part of
it at least as rests on this pulpit (and much does)--depends on the
panel mouldings, or on the relievi? The panel mouldings are by his
hand; he would have disdained to leave even them to a common workman;
but do you think he found any difficulty in them, or thought there was
any credit in them? Having once done the sculpture, those enclosing
lines were mere child's play to him; the determination of the diameter
of shafts and height of capitals was an affair of minutes; his
_work_ was in carving the Crucifixion and the Baptism.
Or, again, do you recollect Orcagna's tabernacle in the church of San
Michele, at Florence? That, also, consists of rich and multitudinous
bas-reliefs, enclosed in panel mouldings, with shafts of mosaic, and
foliated arches sustaining the canopy. Do you think Orcagna, any more
than Pisano, if his spirit could rise in the midst of us at this
moment, would tell us that he had trusted his fame to the foliation, or
had put his soul's pride into the panelling? Not so; he would tell you
that his spirit was in the stooping figures that stand round the couch
of the dying Virgin.
Or, lastly, do you think the man who designed the procession on the
portal of Amiens was the subordinate workman? that there was an
architect over _him_, restraining him within certain limits, and
ordering of him his bishops at so much a mitre, and his cripples at so
much a crutch? Not so. _Here_, on this sculptured shield, rests
the Master's hand; _this_ is the centre of the Master's thought;
from this, and in subordination to this, waved the arch and sprang the
pinnacle. Having done this, and being able to give human expression and
action to the stone, all the rest--the rib, the niche, the foil, the
shaft--were mere toys to his hand and accessories to his conception:
and if once you also gain the gift of doing this, if once you can carve
one fronton such as you have here, I tell you, you would be able--so
far as it depended on your invention--to scatter cathedrals over
England as fast as clouds rise from its streams after summer rain.
Nay, but perhaps you answer again, our sculptors at present do not
design cathedrals, and could not. No, they could not; but that is
merely because we have made architecture so dull that they cannot take
any interest in it, and, therefore, do not care to add to their higher
knowledge the poor and common knowledge of principles of building. You
have thus separated building from sculpture, and you have taken away
the power of both; for the sculptor loses nearly as much by never
having room for the development of a continuous work, as you do from
having reduced your work to a continuity of mechanism. You are
essentially, and should always be, the same body of men, admitting only
such difference in operation as there is between the work of a painter
at different times, who sometimes labours on a small picture, and
sometimes on the frescoes of a palace gallery.
This conclusion, then, we arrive at, _must_ arrive at; the fact
being irrevocably so:--that in order to give your imagination and the
other powers of your souls full play, you must do as all the great
architects of old time did--you must yourselves be your sculptors.
Phidias, Michael Angelo, Orcagna, Pisano, Giotto,--which of these men,
do you think, could not use his chisel? You say, "It is difficult;
quite out of your way." I know it is; nothing that is great is easy;
and nothing that is great, so long as you study building without
sculpture, can be _in_ your way. I want to put it in your way, and
you to find your way to it. But, on the other hand, do not shrink from
the task as if the refined art of perfect sculpture were always
required from you. For, though architecture and sculpture are not
separate arts, there is an architectural _manner_ of sculpture;
and it is, in the majority of its applications, a comparatively easy
one. Our great mistake at present, in dealing with stone at all, is
requiring to have all our work too refined; it is just the same mistake
as if we were to require all our book illustrations to be as fine work
as Raphael's. John Leech does not sketch so well as Leonardo da Vinci;
but do you think that the public could easily spare him; or that he is
wrong in bringing out his talent in the way in which it is most
effective? Would you advise him, if he asked your advice, to give up
his wood-blocks and take to canvas? I know you would not; neither would
you tell him, I believe, on the other hand, that because he could not
draw as well as Leonardo, therefore he ought to draw nothing but
straight lines with a ruler, and circles with compasses, and no figure-
subjects at all. That would be some loss to you; would it not? You
would all be vexed if next week's _Punch_ had nothing in it but
proportionate lines. And yet, do not you see that you are doing
precisely the same thing with _your_ powers of sculptural design
that he would be doing with his powers of pictorial design, if he gave
you nothing but such lines. You feel that you cannot carve like
Phidias; therefore you will not carve at all, but only draw mouldings;
and thus all that intermediate power which is of especial value in
modern days,--that popular power of expression which is within the
attainment of thousands,--and would address itself to tens of
thousands,--is utterly lost to us in stone, though in ink and paper it
has become one of the most desired luxuries of modern civilization.
Here, then, is one part of the subject to which I would especially
invite your attention, namely, the distinctive character which may be
wisely permitted to belong to architectural sculpture, as distinguished
from perfect sculpture on one side, and from mere geometrical
decoration on the other.
And first, observe what an indulgence we have in the distance at which
most work is to be seen. Supposing we were able to carve eyes and lips
with the most exquisite precision, it would all be of no use as soon as
the work was put far above the eye; but, on the other hand, as beauties
disappear by being far withdrawn, so will faults; and the mystery and
confusion which are the natural consequence of distance, while they
would often render your best skill but vain, will as often render your
worst errors of little consequence; nay, more than this, often a deep
cut, or a rude angle, will produce in certain positions an effect of
expression both startling and true, which you never hoped for. Not that
mere distance will give animation to the work, if it has none in
itself; but if it has life at all, the distance will make that life
more perceptible and powerful by softening the defects of execution. So
that you are placed, as workmen, in this position of singular
advantage, that you may give your fancies free play, and strike hard
for the expression that you want, knowing that, if you miss it, no one
will detect you; if you at all touch it, nature herself will help you,
and with every changing shadow and basking sunbeam bring forth new
phases of your fancy.
But it is not merely this privilege of being imperfect which belongs to
architectural sculpture. It has a true privilege of imagination, far
excelling all that can be granted to the more finished work, which, for
the sake of distinction, I will call,--and I don't think we can have a
much better term--"furniture sculpture;" sculpture, that is, which can
be moved from place to furnish rooms.
For observe, to that sculpture the spectator is usually brought in a
tranquil or prosaic state of mind; he sees it associated rather with
what is sumptuous than sublime, and under circumstances which address
themselves more to his comfort than his curiosity. The statue which is
to be pathetic, seen between the flashes of footmen's livery round the
dining-table, must have strong elements of pathos in itself; and the
statue which is to be awful, in the midst of the gossip of the drawing-
room, must have the elements of awe wholly in itself. But the spectator
is brought to _your_ work already in an excited and imaginative
mood. He has been impressed by the cathedral wall as it loomed over the
low streets, before he looks up to the carving of its porch--and his
love of mystery has been touched by the silence and the shadows of the
cloister, before he can set himself to decipher the bosses on its
vaulting. So that when once he begins to observe your doings, he will
ask nothing better from you, nothing kinder from you, than that you
would meet this imaginative temper of his half way;--that you would
farther touch the sense of terror, or satisfy the expectation of things
strange, which have been prompted by the mystery or the majesty of the
surrounding scene. And thus, your leaving forms more or less undefined,
or carrying out your fancies, however extravagant, in grotesqueness of
shadow or shape, will be for the most part in accordance with the
temper of the observer; and he is likely, therefore, much more
willingly to use his fancy to help your meanings, than his judgment to
detect your faults.
Again. Remember that when the imagination and feelings are strongly
excited, they will not only bear with strange things, but they will
_look_ into _minute_ things with a delight quite unknown in
hours of tranquillity. You surely must remember moments of your lives
in which, under some strong excitement of feeling, all the details of
visible objects presented themselves with a strange intensity and
insistance, whether you would or no; urging themselves upon the mind,
and thrust upon the eye, with a force of fascination which you could
not refuse. Now, to a certain extent, the senses get into this state
whenever the imagination is strongly excited. Things trivial at other
times assume a dignity or significance which we cannot explain; but
which is only the more attractive because inexplicable: and the powers
of attention, quickened by the feverish excitement, fasten and feed
upon the minutest circumstances of detail, and remotest traces of
intention. So that what would at other times be felt as more or less
mean or extraneous in a work of sculpture, and which would assuredly be
offensive to the perfect taste in its moments of languor, or of
critical judgment, will be grateful, and even sublime, when it meets
this frightened inquisitiveness, this fascinated watchfulness, of the
roused imagination. And this is all for your advantage; for, in the
beginnings of your sculpture, you will assuredly find it easier to
imitate minute circumstances of costume or character, than to perfect
the anatomy of simple forms or the flow of noble masses; and it will be
encouraging to remember that the grace you cannot perfect, and the
simplicity you cannot achieve, would be in great part vain, even if you
could achieve them, in their appeal to the hasty curiosity of
passionate fancy; but that the sympathy which would be refused to your
science will be granted to your innocence: and that the mind of the
general observer, though wholly unaffected by the correctness of
anatomy or propriety of gesture, will follow you with fond and pleased
concurrence, as you carve the knots of the hair, and the patterns of
the vesture.
Farther yet. We are to remember that not only do the associated
features of the larger architecture tend to excite the strength of
fancy, but the architectural laws to which you are obliged to submit
your decoration stimulate its _ingenuity_. Every crocket which you
are to crest with sculpture,--every foliation which you have to fill,
presents itself to the spectator's fancy, not only as a pretty thing,
but as a _problematic_ thing. It contained, he perceives
immediately, not only a beauty which you wished to display, but a
necessity which you were forced to meet; and the problem, how to occupy
such and such a space with organic form in any probable way, or how to
turn such a boss or ridge into a conceivable image of life, becomes at
once, to him as to you, a matter of amusement as much as of admiration.
The ordinary conditions of perfection in form, gesture, or feature, are
willingly dispensed with, when the ugly dwarf and ungainly goblin have
only to gather themselves into angles, or crouch to carry corbels; and
the want of skill which, in other kinds of work would have been
required for the finishing of the parts, will at once be forgiven here,
if you have only disposed ingeniously what you have executed roughly,
and atoned for the rudeness of your hands by the quickness of your
wits.
Hitherto, however, we have been considering only the circumstances in
architecture favourable to the development of the _powers_ of
imagination. A yet more important point for us seems, to me, the place
which it gives to all the _objects_ of imagination.